The Woodland Mills BSM's I've looked at, were china made, pretty much direct copy of a known quality BSM, so that doesn't take much engineering to end up with a decent BSM.
Use decent steel, and you get a decent copy.
SR
Actually, Woodland started the whole trend many years ago with the low-cost "tinker toy" mills made in China. At the time, they had a unique design not based on anyone else. It was much lighter duty than a Woodmizer or Norwood, for example, with much more assembly required -- you'd never mistake the Woodland for anyone else! I didn't particularly like their early mills, but they were very successful and made a big dent in the market. It was Woodland that got copied by Harbor Freight,
Woodmaxx, and other Chinese clones in time. Woodland was so successful that Norwood eventually entered the low-cost market with their eerily-similar Frontier line made in China, and even Woodmizer has a low-cost model line now. In my opinion they are all decent mills as long as you know what you are getting.
The later generations of Woodland mills got better and better, and by 2020 I felt like it was a pretty good product (still their unique design that kept evolving). I had planned to buy a Norwood or Woodmizer in late-2020, but both companies had a hard time keeping up with demand due to high lumber prices and had huge backlogs (it would later hit Woodland, when they had about 6-8 month backlog in 2021). Norwood had big issues with customer support and burned a lot of customers during that time. They never gave me the same answer twice when I tried getting delivery estimates, and I later learned they were shipping incomplete mills to customers and people were waiting months to get all the parts needed to run their new mills. Woodmizer wasn't doing good either, and was not responsive to my inquiries. All I wanted was honest, consistent info so they could take my money and get an order on the books.
On a lark I contacted Woodland and a nice lady pulled up a spreadsheet on her computer and was able to give me a 4-week forecast on their inventory. She mentioned they had a handful of the HM-122 model with the larger engine in the Buffalo NY warehouse that I could get within a week, so I got on the website and ordered one. I had been budgeting $10-12K for a mid-level Norwood or Woodmizer and instead spent $3300 on the entry-level Woodland unit with a 20' track. Big difference. I had lower expectations for sure.
I figured if it didn't work out I could sell it for what I paid and go back to Norwood or Woodmizer. Well, it's one of those rare products that blew me away. For the past 10-15 years, all my milling has been done on a friend's $35K Woodmizer with full hydraulics, which sets a pretty high bar. Obviously Woodland can't compete with that, but it's been a super productive mill for me and hasn't given me a lick of trouble. The quality is very good, the design is excellent (both company owners are mechanical engineers and do designs in-house), and they have some nice standard features that are options on other brands. Norwood wanted $200 for a blade lube system, plus another option to tie it into the throttle control, and it all came standard on the Woodland. I also like that all the wear items like belts and bearings are generic and easy to find. They have very detailed parts diagrams and lists in the owner's manual. I stocked up on belts and bearings and a few other wear items from local suppliers and Amazon.
I had one minor part break on the sawhead height crank index pin, which didn't slow me down but I sent them an e-mail asking for a replacement. They had it shipped from Canada to Virginia in 2 days and threw in a free hat too. They later released a free upgrade kit for sawhead post bushings, and again sent that over the border in 2 days. Their customer support has been great.
The final thing I suggest prospective buyers look at are the Facebook groups for each company. I am on several as an observer (I only post on the Woodland one). Let me tell you there is a huge difference. Norwood's is dominated by people complaining about customer support and is hard to look at. The Woodland group might get 1-2 disgruntled customers a month, but otherwise it's loaded with posts from people sawing lumber and building projects -- they are using their mills instead of complaining about them. When there is an issue, customer support steps in quickly and helps. The hardest part of the Woodland Facebook group is the large amount of novices who don't know much about tools/equipment/milling and can't be bothered to read the manual. I think that's par for the course with Facebook. I don't know how those folks survived before Facebook, they must have been aimlessly wandering around...
